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Marvel Studios’ latest – Thor: Ragnarok – is about as delightful a film to come from the Marvel/Disney machine as we’ve yet seen.

Marrying the free-wheeling whimsy of Ant-Man with the trippy nothing-is-too-zany visual style of Dr. Strange, layering in the heart and humanity of the Captain America films, and playing off the wackadoodle Shakespearean promise of Kenneth Branagh’s first Thor, director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) nonetheless delivers a completely unique vision and a superhero flick for the ages.

There is nary a shred of evidence of the micromanaged focus-grouping that seems to have plagued other entries in Marvel’s now 17-movie strong cinematic universe: the unfunny, overbaked narrative mush of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2; the ponderous “how-many-action-figures-can-we-cram-into-this-for-merchandising” clutter of Avengers: Age of Ultron; the just plain dull-as-dishwater “end-is-nigh” pretense of, yes, Thor: The Dark World.

No, Thor: Ragnarok belies its title with a light-as-air zip and a screwball comic touch that plays beautifully to star Chris Hemsworth’s Cary-Grant-trapped-in-Tab-Hunter’s-body charms. Hemsworth’s gift is in simultaneously embracing the absurd and the self-serious, mining Thor’s lovable arrogance in uncertain circumstances for “fish-out-of-water” laughs. Akin to Shakespeare’s better “history” plays (say, Henry IV with its introduction of the iconic Falstaff), Ragnarok honors the operatic complexity of its source Norse mythology by juxtaposing the light and the dark, the goofy and the grand, to play out the prodigal son’s/hero’s quest to overcome both palace intrigue and the intoxicating lure of interstellar adventure to find his proper path to the throne.

The film shouldn’t work as well as it does. Waititi is obviously fueled by a love of the corny sci-fi box office bombs that littered HBO’s schedule in the early and mid 80s (post-Star Wars) like Krull, Beastmaster, Flash Gordon, Buckaroo Banzai, and so on – movies that I myself watched in a constant loop, attracted to the gonzo so-bad-it’s-great storytelling and campy visuals. In fact, Mark Mothersbaugh’s Moog-synth score sounds like it was written for an arcade game in 1983. And that’s a fabulous thing. (There is also an epic use of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” in segments that bookend the film. It’s a touch that not only enlivens the two sequences in which the tune is used but adds a nice layer of meta commentary – “we come from the land of the ice and snow” – about finding one’s home and one’s place in this world.)

However, Waititi isn’t on a nostalgia trip; he isn’t interested in self-indulgence. Rather, with a Howard Hawks-esque (Bringing Up Baby) command of pacing, set-up, visual jokes, and patter, Waititi delivers a character-driven romp that celebrates a lost soul embracing his destiny and learning a touch of humility along the way. Of course, in this case, the lost soul happens to be the Norse God of Thunder and a superheroic Avenger who pals around with the Hulk, but that’s beside the point. Odin (a wry Anthony Hopkins) consoles his son at one point, when Thor is bemoaning the loss of his magic hammer Mjolnir, “But … are you Thor, god of … hammers?”

The plot is almost impossible to encapsulate, but I’ll try. Thor and brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston reclaiming the smarmy twinkle that made the character such fun initially) are on a search to find their father Odin who is hiding out in Norway. Early on, they encounter Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange in a witty cat-and-mouse sequence that telegraphs that Ragnarok won’t be your typical Marvel flick.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Eventually, Loki and Thor discover that their father has concealed both a dark history from them and the existence of a sister Hela (Cate Blanchett, all slither and swagger and having a devil of a good time) who has returned to Asgard to take over the universe and wear some really fierce eyeliner and multi-horned headgear. Thor and Loki get shunted by Hela to Sakaar, a planet of garbage and misfit toys, where Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster runs a Let’s Make a Deal-meets-Gladiator “Contest of Champions.” (This is the best use of Goldblum’s insidious, out-sized, googly-eyed demeanor in years.)

Lo and behold, Thor’s old buddy The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo fully embracing the sweet/sour rampaging baby characterization from the Avengers films) is somehow on Sakaar too. The boys fight; they make up; they fight again; and eventually, with the aid of new compatriot Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson bringing the boozy, bossy fun), return to Asgard and save the day (more or less) from Hela’s machinations. Whew.

Oh, and Karl Urban (Star Trek, Dredd, Pete’s Dragon) pops up as Hela’s right-hand thug Skurge the Executioner, and, as always, Urban brings a nuanced inner-conflict and a compelling screen presence to a character who in lesser hands would have been a screaming, raving slab of testosterone. One day, I’d like to see him in a movie that doesn’t require special effects, if they make those any more.

In the end, though, the film is a showcase for Hemsworth’s effervescent wit and steroidal comedy and for Waititi’s sure-handed cinematic voice and eye-popping visuals. Hemsworth is at a difficult career crossroads: a household name actor in international box office blockbusters who doesn’t yet seem like a star. Perhaps this turn will change that. If not, he and Waititi need to team up again posthaste and, maybe this time, sans capes. Hemsworth is that rare performer – a beautiful human specimen with the comic genius of an ugly duckling. Waititi is that rare director – one who loves all films and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the best and the worst but deftly avoids self-indulgence and derivativeness. As Goldblum’s Grandmaster says in response to Thor’s use of his lightning powers, “Out of your fingers … was that, like, sparkles?” Indeed, Hemsworth plus Waititi generate nothing but cinematic sparkles. Here’s hoping for more.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

Thanks to Gail Lamarche and the Legal Marketing Association‘s Social Media Special Interest Group for including me in their series of interviews this month “12 Days of Social Media.” Gail writes (very kindly, I might add): “I’m thrilled to participate today and share insights from a great in-house friend from the Motor City, Roy Sexton from Trott Law, PC. I first met Roy at a LMA National Conference in Orlando a couple years ago when he attended the Social Media SIG’s Tweet-up. Since then, Roy is quickly becoming an integral part of the LMA community and currently serves as a board member-at-large for the Midwest Chapter.” You can read the original post here.

1. What’s the next big thing in social media marketing for law firms in 2016?

I think the next big thing remains the last big thing. And it’s not some kind of zippy technology or shiny new platform. It remains the ever-elusive crossroads of great content and authentic engagement. I had a relative give me grief once, querying “How can you have so many friends?” with a particularly sniffy emphasis on the word friends. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to reply, “How can you not?”

The reality is that we and our colleagues, as professionals (and, cough, being of a certain age) have accumulated hundreds, nay, thousands of connections in our lives. Some stronger than others, obviously, but social media in all its permutations offers us the ultimate efficiency machine in drawing all the threads of our respective lives in a one-stop shop. The problem therein is in the authenticity of those relationships as evidenced by the time we do – or even can – spend developing them, and perhaps that was the heart of my cousin’s question (though I rather doubt the inquiry was that nuanced).

You can’t just gather up an army of digital acolytes and hope something magical happens in order to promote your service or to achieve your desired business outcomes. You have to engage these people in meaningful ways that add value to their daily lives. As in life, a social media relationship is a transaction. It can be small – making sure you acknowledge a client/co-worker/colleague birthday – or big – writing a killer blog post that gives great analysis on a developing legislative issue or case victory.

The point is this: figure out the recipe that brings you success in your in-person relationships and apply that to the digital world. And, if you figure that out for yourself, you will be able to work wonders for your attorneys or your clients. You will be bringing them value and insight personally, and you will also be able to provide coaching and mentoring to help them do the same for their own networks. It’s been said before, but don’t approach social media as a task or as a campaign tactic (even if that is basically what it is), but rather position social media as a key component of your (and your organization’s) daily voice, both personally and professionally.

2. Who do you see doing social media marketing right, and what can others learn from them?

I get frustrated when I see us only look at what other law firms are doing in this space. Competitive benchmarking is important, of course, but I think the biggest innovation and the best work is happening in other industries or even in the white hot glare of celebrity culture.

Take Disney for example. None of us will ever have the budgets (or the legion of marketing minions) that the Mouse House has at its white-gloved disposal. However, you can still learn from what they are doing well, even if it borders on market saturation. With the launch of a new tent-pole like Avengers: Age of Ultron or the ubiquitous Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they have successfully leveraged the personal appeal of the professionals involved (the film stars), encouraging (and likely requiring) them to tweet, post, kvetch about their respective films in their own inimitable voices. Carrie Fisher alone, with her mix of cheek and charm, has been doing yeoman’s work singlehandedly making every Baby Boomer want to see a film about which they might have been otherwise indifferent. Disney has also supplied content across all levels of potential engagement – scientists to fanboys – in an endless series of articles, seriously journalistic and seriously not, using that old standby SEO to have a new wave of clickbait waiting on your device every time you log on.

I also look at celebrities – like Felicia Day (The Guild) or Katy Perry or even, heaven help us, Miley Cyrus and some of our politicians – who have used a digital space to expand their brand, personally and professionally, creating the very real illusion that they are interacting meaningfully with those who buy their stuff and sharing TMI as a channel for launching a new book/download/video. It’s the old Johnny Carson/Barbara Walters-confessional on steroids … but utterly controlled by the confessor.

So what? Why should we as legal marketers care? Because this is what we ourselves consume in our downtime and this is increasingly how the world expects to interact with its stars, its service providers, its industry, its government, and so on. No attorney should ever mimic Miley in their social media protocols. Ever. Yet, the days where you could legitimately say “Well, I use LinkedIn for professional contacts and Facebook for personal” are over. Social media is the new golf course or cocktail party where a conversation can flow naturally from the personal to the professional and back again. It doesn’t replace in-person interaction but it sure as heck enhances it.

And one final note – benchmark within LMA and look at your fellow members who do such a great job of branding themselves as individuals and as key members of their respective organizations: Nancy Myrland, Lindsay Griffiths, Heather Morse-Geller, Laura Toledo, Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Gail Lamarche, Tim Corcoran, Catherine MacDonagh, Lance Godard, Adrian Lurssen, Gina Rubel, Darryl Cross, and many others I’m leaving out so I don’t sound like a total sycophant.

Check out their pages – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and their blogs – study how they glide between humor and insight, poignancy and camp, silliness and impressive data-driven analysis. Benchmark that and see what lessons you can import to the good work you do for yourself and your firm.

3. What’s the biggest challenge for law firms trying to be active in the social media space, and how can they overcome it?

I just hate that occasionally we still find ourselves in the defensive position of talking colleagues off a ledge about social media, but it is the reality we will always face. And, honestly, I think it’s a healthy tension to have. Marketers, (no offense, as I include myself in this) tend to get giddy about a glittering new creative idea, so having a countervailing force in our lives asking “Why, how much, what will be achieved, and what are the risks?” is really important. We may ask ourselves those questions, but, if we are already smitten with the idea, we may not be as objectively agnostic as warranted. Well-navigated pressure refines an idea and strengthens resolve. Use it to your advantage.

Beyond that, I think another hurdle is in creating crisp clarity of voice. The trick is creating a social media profile for our firms that has a collective consistency while still allowing the wonderful and accomplished individuals within those firms to shine through. There can be a tendency toward marketing homogenization where the writing all sounds like it is coming from a machine. You have to fight that, and create messaging that seems to be coming from real people. How do you do that? Well, let real people do the writing, and create the guidance/parameters for both marketing pieces and individual attorney efforts that will provide solace to managing partners who fear (rightly so) any erosion of client privilege or a glib post that devolves into a PR crisis.

Walking that high-wire act between inspiring creativity and controlling outcomes is the biggest challenge in this sphere, and I don’t think there is an easy answer. You have to look honestly at your own skills and deficiencies as a leader, to review opportunistically what are assets and what are limitations in your respective firm cultures, to gauge what your clients will accept/appreciate and how they themselves are interacting with their clients and business partners, and to be crystal clear about what is proper practice in the legal industry (regional/state/national). Once you’ve done that work – with integrity and enthusiasm – then you can properly achieve the right consensus that will engage your colleagues and help them connect with your clients.

Roy Sexton serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Trott Law, P.C., a Metro Detroit law firm specializing in all facets of real estate finance legal work, including litigation, bankruptcy, eviction, REO and default servicing – www.trottlaw.com. In addition to leading Trott Law’s marketing and strategic planning, Sexton is responsible for the overall organizational and cultural communication and change, business development, service line planning, facility planning and support, and other administrative oversight.

Prior to joining Trott Law, Roy spent 10 years in various planning and communications roles at Oakwood Healthcare System, serving as the corporate director of strategic communications and planning. In this role he led a staff of 20 marketing professionals and developed the strategic direction for the $1 billion health care system. He also worked at Deloitte Consulting.

Roy earned his Bachelor’s degree from Wabash College in 1995 and is a 1997 graduate of The Ohio State University, where he earned his Master’s degree in Theatre. In 2007, Roy graduated with his MBA from the University of Michigan. He is a graduate of Leadership Detroit and Leadership A2Y, is a governor-appointed member of the Michigan Council of Labor and Economic Growth and was appointed to the Michigan Mortgage Lenders Association Board of Governors (local and now state) in 2012. Roy has been involved on the following nonprofit boards and committees: First Step, Michigan Quality Council, National MS Society, ASPCA, Wabash College Southeast Michigan Alumni Association, Penny Seats Theatre Company and the Spotlight Players. He is a published author with two books Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 & 2 (based on his blog of the same name – www.reelroyreviews.com). He is a board member-at-large for the Midwest Chapter of LMA.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is all you might hope it should be. And that’s part of its problem.

I feel in writing this review that I may as well be discussing a plate of really fabulous spaghetti: so much tasty sameness, so many empty carbs, no discernible beginning/middle/end, satisfying a craving that I didn’t know I had, leaving me a bit bloated … and yet I will happily eat it again after my sense-memory has recovered.

Joss Whedon, beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer architect and director of the first Avengers, returns to helm this sequel. This will be blasphemy to some of my geek brethren, but Whedon is no auteur. (I hold out hope that Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors The Russo Brothers will be the ones who finally deliver The Godfather of superhero genre flicks. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was close but a bit too pompously high-falutin’ for my tastes.) Whedon carries an episodic TV sensibility to his film projects. And that’s ok, but, once you’re aware that he seems to work in 28-minute long “beats,” you start to feel the clock ticking.

And, wowzers, does the clock tick with Ultron. With trailers (and the need to get there so early that you aren’t sitting on the front row gazing up Chris Hemsworth’s flaring Asgardian nostrils), your rear is in a theatre seat nearly three hours. The film is straining at the seams with just so much Marvel muchness that you wonder if a cleaner, clearer narrative had been focus-grouped into this orgiastic merchandising hydra by the good folks at Disney.

Regardless, the film offers much to delight both comic book loons like myself and the average Marvel moviegoer who doesn’t know Ant-Man from an ant, man. (Sorry.)

Whedon wisely knows that the audience for these cinematic beasts adores brightly-lit four-color action peppered with jazzy comic asides and a healthy dose of soap-opera-lite character beats. He also (with the help of super-producer Kevin Feige, who really should be in the movie marketing hall-of-fame at this point) realizes that the perfect ensemble, gifted with acting chops that exceed the material but with a keen sense of wit and gratitude to enjoy the ride anyway, turns a workmanlike summer blockbuster transcendent.

Mark Ruffalo continues to steal the show as beautiful loser Bruce Banner (Hulk), with just the right hint of Bill Bixby’s gloom married to his own shaggy twinkle. Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow) gives as good as she gets in her cat-and-mouse flirtation with Ruffalo, and, while I’m sure most of the audience was squirming/snoozing as they awaited the next CGI-encrusted battle sequence, I really enjoyed those quieter moments.

Similarly, Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye), who came off as a glowering dullard in previous installments, really gets a chance to exercise his comedic action chops and soulful humanity. I won’t spoil the cinematically invented back-story they layer on Hawkeye, but this fanboy for one was a fan of the fairly significant change the filmmakers made from long-standing comic canon. Hawkeye suddenly becomes the heart and soul of a franchise that hitherto kept him far on the periphery.

The rest of the cast is solid and fun as expected. Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Hemsworth (Thor), and Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man) are frothy delights, offering as much banter this time as they do alpha-male action. Downey is blessedly restrained, offering a hint of unintentionally gleeful malice – an ominous note of what may yet come to the franchise. He is counter-balanced nicely by Evans who telegraphs the audience’s own mounting anxiety over a planet that is quickly becoming overstuffed with people/creatures/beings with too many abilities/too few ethics.

Newcomers include twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who weirdly enough played spouses in last year’s Godzilla reboot) and The Vision (Paul Bettany). They are all fine in rather under-written, slightly confusing roles. While it’s fun to see these Marvel legends in the flesh, they really weren’t necessary and detracted from the other characters we’ve come to know and love. This is the danger with all of these comic book movies – how do you keep the nerds (myself included) happy and sell lots of toys without devolving into carnival kitsch? The film skates a fine line and nearly goes over the edge.

Finally, though, this Marvel entry gets its villain so very right (not unlike the oily charisma of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki). Ultron, as voiced by slippery eel James Spader (I’m starting to wonder if Marvel films are where all smart aleck ex-Brat Packers go to die?), is frightening, ominous, charming, and essential. He intones early in the film, “How can humanity be saved if it doesn’t eeeeevooooolve.” (Darn right, brother – I need that needle-pointed on a pillow, stat).

Of course, robotic overlord that he is, Ultron – created by Stark himself as a means of creating “lasting peace” – asserts that the only logical way to create lasting peace is to render all of humanity extinct. Now there is an allegory for our fractious times. I won’t spoil the adventure on how he gets there (I’m not even totally sure I followed all the muddled machinations myself), but I got quite a perverse kick from Spader’s Ultron and his well-intentioned sociopathy.

(I should have never admitted that last bit, I suppose? Maybe Marvel will need someone to play the villain in their next summer opus? Sign me up!)

Go to Avengers: Age of Ultron for the Marvel-fied comfort food … but stay for the dark bon-bon (Spader) at the film’s anarchic core.